RATTLE e-reviews: Tall If by Mark Irwin

RATTLE has posted a new e-review of a New Issues title: Tall If by Mark Irwin.

A sample of the review:
"The best poems of this collection, like 'When I Died,' are small, continuous reversals of perception, akin to Emily Dickinson, to whom the title of 'When I Died' is indebted. Like Dickinson, Irwin's voice has a strange power of conjoining disparate images. 'The Field,' for example, begins 'I like the field best in winter when it's a giant bug / lying on its back, when its legs / are trees, walking through the sky.' Some poets might stop here, having used the metaphor for effect, but Irwin pursues it until, in a moment resembling either apocalypse or rapture, the bug rights itself and carries the bodies buried in the field 'like eggs to another earth.'"

For the complete review: Tall If reviewed by Andrew Allport.

Mark Irwin on Poetry Daily

"Voice, Distant, Still Assembling" from Mark Irwin's newly released book Tall If was featured November 29th on the Poetry Daily website. Follow this link to read the poem.

New Poetry from New Issues

New Issues announces the publication of two new poetry books: Please, a debut collection by Jericho Brown, and Tall If by Mark Irwin.

Claudia Rankine says this about Please: "To read these poems is to encounter the devastating genius of Jericho Brown." Read more reviews on the New Issues website. Read "Beneath Me" and "Your Body Made Heavy with Gin" from Please.

The American Book Review has called Mark Irwin's poetry “ . . . vibrant and alert, a poetry to contend with . . ." and Publisher's Weekly had this to say about Irwin's earlier work: "Brilliant, Irwin’s intellect and the urgency of his words remain traditionally steadfast." Read "Doors" and "Theory" from Tall If.

Both books are available online from Amazon.com and Spdbooks.org.